crossroads

I feel as if I'm at a crossroads, not personally, no, nothing like that, though how do I divorce myself from me and my digital persona, eh? I'm at a crossroads here at this blog, a venue in operation since Bloomsday 2006. Should I rebrand? More accurately, shouldn't I brand better? To paraphrase the name of President Biden's proposed omnibus spending program inching through Congress: Build Brand Better (BBB). 

After all, exactly what is my brand?

It's never been singularly focused or dedicated to one thing. It has included poetry, haiku, baseball, writing, authoring, editing, wordplay, essays, personal musings, humor, travel, criticism, politics, grief, religion, zen, literature, aesthetics, ADHD, love, loss, gain, and other notions I can't summon to mind. 

I'm at a branding crossroads. I'm at the Brandingburg Gate.

It doesn't take a marketing genius to see the value of sticking to one topic. From my sparse and amateurish research, I am told that bloggers, vloggers, Instagrammers, assorted "influencers," and even sordid pornographers find their niche (or fetish) and stick to it, consistently adhering to a recognizable theme or feel or stance. 

What would be my brand?

Would I need to retire The Laughorist and start anew?

Start anew as what or who?

I don't have the star power of a celebrity name or the tawdry pull of infamy. (Is there a difference anymore between fame and infamy?) But even tacky celebs who have no talent other than promoting their name as a brand on the way to becoming billionaires started somewhere. I am disparaging them, but it sure sounds like I'm envying them, too. After all, they've got this branding thing down.

Do I rebrand by referring to myself (or my persona) by one name? First name or last? Real name or conjured up?

Am I impervious to branding success? Too old? (Add that as a topic to the list above.)

Whoa is me.

Strike up the brand.

Let's go branding.

quote unquote exciting

I strolled into my bank. "My" is undeserving of this application of a personal pronoun. The article "the" is apt in this context that is being built one verbal brick at a time. When this institution was a credit union, when I joined it in 1990, "my" would be literally and figuratively correct. But that was then. (I don't have to tell you we live in radically different times. Even if you hear someone lament the externals of these times, you can't commonsensically conclude whose side they are on: the uncivil, invidious xenophobes or the unmoored, vexed communitarians [moi].) 

Back to my bank stroll. 

I glide through the lobby, a boulevardier without portfolio, a citizen of the commonwealth (as if our wealth were common!). Absent any forethought, I ease into one of the cozy faux-leather chairs arranged away from the tellers, a distance from the glassed, venetian-blinded offices of "associates." The armed chairs (meaning they had armrests not weaponry) were in a tight circle around a nonexistent bonfire, adjacent to a Keurig with coffee pods, creamer, sugar, stirrers, all of this free stuff intended to enhance the customer experience, to welcome bank customers and prospects, or bank customers' or prospects' friends or relatives awaiting the financial-task-performer's task completion. Granted, the chairs might potentially host a waiting retinue attending to latter-day Bonnies and Clydes or Jesse Jameses, their thumbs gliding on "devices" in order to share strategic get-away info. (But why would they be so foolish or risky? Today's thieves silently hack, 24/7, invisible even to the rest of the household above the Mountain Dew-empties-littered room in the basement illuminated only by a nest of computer screens.) Do not so breezily dismiss this heist theory: at the entrance, the bank warns entrants against wearing hats or sunglasses for this very reason. Really? How retro!

As I said, I plop down on the tawny-cream vinyl waiting-room-decor chair. I figure I'd complete a text or two before entering the line (no waiting line evident, actually) to "do my business." Being old, I am an agonizingly slow texter, using my (not "the") index finger, not my thumbs, which anyone under 40 does, which is agonizing for millennials et al. to observe. Drives them nuts.

No hurry.

A flaneur not in France. 

An associate pops out of her office, her face barely disguising worry and urgency.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asks in the international language of officialese.

Insouciantly (to continue the français theme), I reply, "No, I'm fine."

If I could've, comfortably attired in my paisley smoking jacket, sans chapeau, I'd've lit a cigar, tossed the wooden match, and asked her for an espresso.

I continue my dilatory digital dalliance on my device.

Within minutes, another associate pops out of her office, next-door to the office of the aforementioned associate.

"May I help you, sir?"

Your poseur-narrator, a former English teacher and retired editor, appreciates her understanding of the distinction between "can" and "may."

However, for this gadabout, the word "sir" in her query is jarring, off-putting. Why? Three, maybe many more, times this associate and I have interacted professionally at the (not "my") bank. She has answered my queries, helped me perform the proper paperwork, seen my signature affixed, and secured a financial instrument or two for me.

Sir?

You don't remember my name, or if not my name my visage, or if not my name or face my signature if I show it to you?

Without hard evidence and with a dollop of imagination, I conclude the two bank associates see me as a threat, an indolent idler casing the joint. A would-be John Dillinger or "Pretty Boy" Floyd in-waiting. (Pawlie Kokonuts does have a certain criminal panache, don't you agree?) 

Some welcome, Keurig and all.

This institution boasts the slogan "America's Most Exciting Bank," a curious tagline given that a tsunami is at least as exciting as a wedding; given that a once-in-a-lifetime stock market plunge is at least as exciting as a World Cup victory.

Despite my insouciance, was I too exciting with regard to Financial Institution Security Heistiness (FISH)?

May I help you, sir?

"No, I'm fine. Thank you," I replied avec un sourire anglais.

the human brand

What are you wearing

It's waterproof, windproof, too

No, what are you wearing

Yeah, no, the jacket, my gloves, the scarf

No, really, tell me

Do you like it

Yes, sort of, yes

Ombre Spicebox Rouge Rogue

Really

Really

Is it showing

What do mean

Can you tell

I can tell

Can I try it

Sure, did you shower

Your deodorant

HideNSeek

Makes scents to me

What about body odor

Mine

What about it

Yours, your body double

My doubled body

Yes, that

Dusk grapefruit coffee ginger seasalt lemon rose vanilla smoke maple clementine

No, not quite

Oak bergamot verbena tobacco dawn nutmeg black pepper sandalwood cardamom ocean

Hardly

Rosewood agarwood orange blossom sage pimento musk orris cacao mancera twilight almond

Not at all

Pekoe cactus pine sugar fern noon mint fog anise river pistachio gardenia cherry

More like it

Maybe

Top notes

Subtle

Yet bold

A statement

More like a hymn

Pour homme

Or femme

Finis

Fine

Dot Orgasm

Who is Dot Orgasm, you ask? You are about to find out. (No, not a retro, 1970s porn star.) According to a recent ruling by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the configuration for top-level domains (TLDs) is about to become virtually unlimited (well, up to 64 characters).

That means aside from dot com or dot org or dot net, or a few other new permissible TLDs, the doors will be wide open. Brand names, slogans, editorials, younameit. And inevitably we'll see dot orgasm, I'm sure, as one of the tamer variations on that theme.

Critics say it will cause chaos. As in dot utterconfusionandanarchy.

I had better reserve dot pawliekokonuts right away (or presently, to use the traditional sense of that word).

They say bidding will start at six figures.

That part, I like.

Hydroxymoron News

A recent Wall Street Journal article notes that due to popular demand (and the ardent passion of zealous Hydrox lovers) Kellogg Co. is bringing back the Hydrox brand cookie. The Hydrox faded owing to the popularity of its competitor, the Oreo cookie, or for who knows what conspiratorial reasons.

Frankly, I'm not all that crazy about either one, though one of them was surely great for dunking into milk just before bed eons ago. 'member dat?

Hydrox. Do you think the choice of name hurt? "A good product name for a toilet cleaner, maybe, but a cookie?" Those are the words of a Dan Lerner, 75, a Hydrox fan quoted in the WSJ piece. (Not that Oreo is that great a name either, in my view.)

I always thought they should have a promotional night at the ballpark in Baltimore; call it Baltimore Oreos Night and give out free cookies. Maybe give out free serial commas along with Kellogg's cereal at another ballpark.

Work with me here. I've been slipping on my own branding. I mean, where are all the aphorisms with laughs? Where have all the laughorisms gone?

Hydrox. What a name. Can anyone nominate some other bad product names?

(Ah, the Internet. Sure enough, there's a blog devoted to bad product names. Of course. There would be. There's everything else. And we mean everything.)

Brand X (or Y) (or maybe ZZZZZZZ)

The makers of OxyContin just got fined for "misbranding" a narcotic. Sheeesh, can you imagine getting addicted to a legally available narcotic? Aren't you shocked? The company is being fined $600 million, and three executives are getting punished to the tune of $34.5 million, for misrepresenting the potential for addiction.

Frankly, I'm worried. (Ever notice when someone, especially at work, says "frankly," he or she is following with a lie?)

Am I next? Will the Feds come after me for misbranding The Laughorist? In my banner at the top of my web log, I proclaim ex cathedra:

A venue for solipsistic eavesdroppers, verbal voyeurs, and hoarse whisperers.

Well, let's do a little examen of conscience:

Is The Laughorist a venue? True enough.

Is The Laughorist for "solipsistic eavesdroppers"? I'll go along with the "eavesdroppers" part, but I confess I'm the one all too typically solipsistic. (Eavesdropper? What the heck is the origin of that word? See preceding link.)

"Verbal voyeurs"? I'm all for voyeurism, verbal or otherwise, but are you? Yes, you viewers are playing peek-a-boo under the eaves of my inner brain, or loins, such as it is; such as they are (or was; were).

"Hoarse whisperers"? Fair enough. One can get hoarse and easily lose one's voice amid the flood and flotsam of miasmic hordes of words, words, words.

But the biggest question of branding vs. misbranding is this:

Does The Laughorist live up to his self-anointed, self-appointed name, namely: blend laughs with aphorisms? Is he one who is a humorist + aphorist?

Alas, only part of the time. Just as often The Laughorist is simply only one paltry, plebeian, morose, or raunchy voice amid the many thongs (oops, I mean, throngs) out in Cyberville. He might even more accurately be sporting one of these monikers: The Grammaticist, or The Solipsist, or The Redactorist.

Remember "We, The Ephemerists"?

So sue me.

Sue me for misbranding.

But don't fine me.

I'm no narcotic misbrander. I might put you to sleep sometime, but addictively narcotic?

I hope I am at least a mild stimulant at least some of the time, if not laughoristically laxative most of the time.

Ever Yours, etc.

Pawlie Kokonuts, Esq.

p.s. Why doesn't the firm that got fined come out with a new product, call it Acci-InContinent? What a pisser!